Drones: Forces of Evil in Heavenly Places

I’m excited to have Isaac Villegas blogging for us this week on the issue of unmanned drones and their effects. Isaac is a profound voice for me in keeping Christ central when we wrestle with the complexities of faith, politics, and life in the world. I love this post for pointing us both backwards (to Jesus) and forward in time through quality research.

“John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’ But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him. … Whoever is not against us is for us.’” (Mark 9:38-40)

Drone image: dvande / Shutterstock.com

People of Jesus work against demons — against the forces of evil that eat away at the goodness of God, the wonder of creation, the life of God in the world. Demonic forces roam the world, corrupting minds and bodies, cultures and governments, trying to bring ruin upon all that is good and beautiful. They dehumanize, devastate, and destroy life.

Weaponized drones are demons: evil spirits of the air, specters in the heavens, shadowy presences. They are forces of evil in heavenly places, triggering mental anxiety and bodily harm, instigating psychological damage and death, raining down terror and trauma.

Last week the law schools at New York University and Stanford University released a report on the terrorizing effect of the use of drone strikes in Pakistan. The constant threat of violence from the sky torments the people on the ground:

“Drones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning. Their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves. Those fears have affected behavior.“

As the study makes clear, drones are doing the work of demons as they terrorize minds and bodies. In this context, Christians find ways to continue the ministry of Jesus, our redeemer, who battled against the demons that sought to eat away at God’s movement of life.

To work against a society, a culture, an economy that produces demonic drones requires all the allies we can find. As Jesus says to his disciples as they battled demons, “Whoever is not against us is for us” (Mark 9:40). Jesus calls his disciples to resist forces of destruction alongside whoever else is doing similar work, regardless of whom she or he claims to follow.

The kingdom of God is for the whole world. The society God wants is not the possession of Christians. With so many demons in the skies, all of us will need to do our part to reclaim spaces on earth for human life to grow, to flourish, to bloom with God’s beauty.

27 Responses

Rev. T., I am still pondering the feelings evoked by the descriptions given in the original study. However, while I’m doing that, I noted this news posted today as “Diary of a Young Girl in Pakistan,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7834402.stm

Per the reports, a teenage girl who lives in the Swat region of NW Pakistan, Malala Yousufzai, age 14, was shot in the neck for blogging against the Taliban. From a news report, “She reached out to the outside world online, taking a stand by writing about her daily battle with extremist militants who used fear and intimidation to force girls to stay at home.”

Also from the source, “Malala’s shooting has sparked national outrage — forcing Pakistanis to take a harsh look at how extremist elements are shaping the nation. ‘Our society is going through a very critical phase,’ said Aazadi Fateh Muhammad, a professor of mass communications at Federal Urdu University Karachi, … ‘Civil society and civilians are in a war with militants and terrorists in every part of the region.'”

It seems reasonable to expect, Rev. T., that while military intervention carries risks – not only described but *circumscribed* in the primary source you indirectly cited – the *absence* of such intervention may risk even more horrific injuries and deaths than those you opposed in your blog.

Will you at least pray for the Taliban to be restrained in their agenda of persecution, and write accordingly?

Folks earlier in my post I mentioned the WMD incident and the consequences we have faced.
Well let us now refresh ourselves on the subject of Taliban, the entity that the US policians say they are trying to eradicate.
However before I go there, let me just remind folks also that in the days of King Zahir Shah and Shah of Iran, these two countries were considered as the Paris of that area, with the latest fashions and perfumes. Women in short skirts! (wow! that was the West in the east). So Afghanistan has been at the same level as other fashionable cities of the world.
Now let us talk of Taliban. The amnesia or deliberate forgetfulness concerning factual data is chronic amongst the commentators.
As a refresher, if anyone remembers, Afghanistan has already gone through a takeover bid by the Russians. Guess who assisted the Afghani ‘Mujahedeen’ (aka freedom fighter and now taliban) to repel and drive the Russians out of their country? You guessed it – USA ! we even armed them with sophisticated stinger missiles and arms and trained them and helped them drive out the Russians. Why did Russia want Afghanistan, I will let you research.
So after the Russians, these Mujahedeen, who were now heroes, came to rule the country.
Unfortunately, they brought in the Islamic rules, no more Paris or Paris type lifestyle, no liquor, no brothels etc.
West went wild at this turn of events and today we see the aftermath of all that, West decided to go in there and clean out, as an extension of the WMD assault on Iraq.
Folks this is very complicated politics, with religious aspects mixed in. For an average person the CNN gives them the picture they want to see… and after a nice short story, we go back to our baseball and football. Let the politicians do their job. Alas that is the situation, no one cares much on what the national debt is or the unemployment figures or how many of our young die out there.
Regards

Ansar must think that we are pretty dumb, to accept that fantasy world that Ansar claims existed. Hey – Americans have been to Afghanistan and know reality.

Now, I have never been to Afghanistan but my brother (an Army officer) has been twice and I have talked to many other folks that have been there recently. Apparently, before the Taliban took over Afghanistan was a vast wasteland of illiterate people living a subsistence existence. There were a few people who might have lived a more cosmopolitan existence. That apparently was a corrupt group that severely restricted the freedom of religion but did tolerate broad opium and hashish production. So that must be what Ansar feels is like Paris!

We did help kick the Russians out of Afghanistan but they got a lot of help from the Saudis and other countries.

So the Taliban takes over and there are a lot of people that they hate – including the West and anyone who does not follow a very strict version of Islam. So they decide to harbor some killers who plan to bomb trains, buses, etc all over the world. While blowing up priceless historical items such as statues.

So after they attack us, we kick their butt.

And Ansar has the freedom to invent a fantasy Afghanistan since Ansar is evidently unhappy that the US has freedom of religion, restricts hashish production, and generally is not like the wonderful days of when Afghanistan had a King.

Bingo! The only effective way to fight terrorists is with weapons that create terror. When a zealot has sworn to kill you at any cost your only choice is to kill him first. The scripture cited bore no relevance to the issue of drones.

Marty, I cannot agree with carpenter’s proposition in its most literal sense, but I also regard your response as over-reaction.

You are correct in that there are many ways to fight organized terrorist networks. For instance, the U.S. military in Afghanistan failed to use effective police techniques – crime databases, fingerprinting & DNA identification, evidence collection – to aggressively prosecute for crime when probable cause was shown. Another way to fight terror networks is to cut their money supply and arms supplies – and for nations supporting terror, impose sanctions. Information, rewards, denunciation of terrorist atrocities by community or religious leaders, etc., may all play roles, although I see none of these as effective in itself. Many will not work without at least a credible threat of armed force as an element of the overall counter-terrorism strategy.

If you oppose terrorism, I seriously doubt that absolute pacifism will be as effective or as moral as you seem to believe, and history suggests that (more often than not) pacifist approaches may invite more atrocities in the long run than active resistance. However, I *do* see a place for choosing less-violent options when that is possible. To effectively fight organized terrorists or insurgents, they must be convinced that they will be opposed for as long as they operate, that their actions will have clear and significant consequences, and that continuing the fight will become increasingly difficult, uncomfortable, ineffective, and hopeless. Terrorists and insurgents, if resisted, must be allowed no place to hide – and there is historical precedent for U.S. forces pursuing hostile groups across national borders to prevent their re-arming and resupply. If it is deemed feasible to rehabilitate or reintegrate some combatants, they must be convinced that a reasonable path for reconciliation is available. Marty, not all of these approaches involve violence – but most are coercive in one way or another, and there must be tough-minded commitment and not naivete in their application. Some approaches one sincerely hopes will work actually fail, and other strategies must then be attempted.

History has repeatedly shown us that when facing a determined foe, “Maginot lines” can be outflanked, “appeasement” is often catastrophic, and wishful thinking and false hopes can be fatal to oneself and for those one is sworn to protect. The Scriptures urge caution in the use of force, slowness to anger, exercise of patience and other fruits of the Spirit, praying for one’s enemies, and even self-sacrifice in the cause of a viable peace – but they do not sanction culpable ignorance or naivete when resisting evil.

You may strongly believe that absolute non-violence is the only way open to you, and I applaud your efforts to live truly to that ideal. I cannot, however, while working and praying for peace, unreservedly support an approach that I view as based on selective appropriation of Scripture, contaminated by non-Scriptural ideology and utopianism, unconvincing in implementation, and blind to its own coercions and violations of the innocent. We can certainly work together on issues of mutual conviction. However, followers of Christ do not always agree, and you should not be surprised when some of us dissent from your views.

Rev. Troyer – Interesting post on a provocative report. At first, Marty, I thought – and still do – that you and Mr. Villegas both interpreted the report’s findings much too uncritically and one-sidedly. However, I definitely recommend the original monograph, despite obvious flaws and distortions. It contains some very cogent narrative descriptions of the impact of war, and at least the authors make an attempt to grapple with the complexities of the Northwest Pakistan multilateral conflict. Their section on “Conflict, Armed Non-state Groups, and Military Forces in Northwest Pakistan” (pp. 17-20) is worth reading and re-reading for context. It actually corroborates several of the points Animux made in his response. Several of the narrative descriptions embedded in the report strongly reminded me of situations I have been through, or of events that some whom I’ve counseled have described to me. My gut-level response, Marty, is that those who put together the report you and Mr. Villegas cite have actually managed to convey a sense of the human violations of sustained conflict at a level that renders your commentary almost insubstantial.

I’ll comment in more depth after taking some time to think over a response. Thanks for the challenge!

I wonder if anyone has investigated whether the drone attacks lead more people to become terrorists than the numbers of terrorists they kill? In which case they are pointless as well as evil. I can’t help feeling that those who support a violent “solution” never question whether it is a solution at all.

Rev. Marty, good post and sad to see how people think. No one wants to go back to the question of the pretense of the WMD’s that Bush used to attack Iraq, then go into Afghanistan – basically anhilating both countries which flourished with life – children frolicking in the streets. Now the same children either do not have a mother or child or sibling.
An advanced country such as this one could only think of this as a solution to avenge 9/11? to go and destroy countries and its people, along the way also participate in the killing thousands of our young?
I just got this YouTube video today, a study performed by a University here:

Ansar – Iraq was clearly not justified, but do you have any idea what Afghanistan was like before we went in there? The country was a pile of rubble with religious police patrolling the streets beating people that they thought might have cut their beard. The government had no money for schools but could provide training camps for the people who planned and carried out sneak attacks on European countries and the US. The children frolicking in the streets were trying to find food. There was not much left there to destroy.

At least now we have built roads so they can rapidly move heroin and hashish to the market.

“The kingdom of God is for the whole world”, this is the problem with Christianity. Its goal is total world domination, it accepts no borders. I’m not religious, I detest the religion because its core principle encourages the worst of human behavior. It is a ‘bailout’ religion, one can do whatever he wants Jesus will bail him out. For this reason Christianity has been able to spread, no one likes restrain and responsibility. No other religion send out missionaries like Christianity.

So what’s a non-Christian to do? Be killed by the Christians? Convert? Or eradicate Christianity?

“The indian chief Hatuey fled with his people but was captured and burned alive. As “they were tying him to the stake a Franciscan friar urged him to take Jesus to his heart so that his soul might go to heaven, rather than descend into hell. Hatuey replied that if heaven was where the Christians went, he would rather go to hell.”

Imagine you’re living on the land that your people have been for thousand of years. Newcomer comes to your land and judge your culture by their standards and make you conform to their standards, what would you do? See the problem here? How’s about the newcomers stay in their land and don’t come to your land? There wouldn’t be a problem with that arrangement, right?

Don’t judge other culture by your own culture. Live and let live. If I were to judge the Christians I would say they are closer to animal than human with all the teen-pregnancy and sex crimes that they have.

Thanks, TruthSeeker, for your important comment. You make a good point. Too often the Christian vision becomes totalitarian, through political and cultural domination, sometimes facilitated by well-meaning missionaries. (If you are interested in this criticism, I would recommend Willie Jennings’ book, The Christian Imagination. He forces us to look at the colonialism involved in the missionary expansion of Christianity.)

I am a Mennonite, and for Mennonites we take seriously the non-coercion of Jesus. We do not try to achieve world domination, through politics or evangelism. Instead, we live a life in the way of Jesus, and hope that the Jesus to whom we bear witness is attractive to others, so attractive that they would like to help us do the work of Christ’s peace for the sake of the world. Instead of forcing people to accept our message, we ask if the way of life that Jesus displays is something that sounds like good news. If it doesn’t, then we continue to love unconditionally and non-coercively. We can even form alliances with non-believing people as we work toward similar goals, like getting rid of the threat of drones so children can experience joy as they play with their friends on the streets in villages across Pakistan.

And if they are worried about drones overhead, we in the US still look up at airliners and remember when they were used as weapons in a sneak attack. We look at backpacks on trains and remember when they were used as bombs to kill innocent civilians.

If the people of Pakistan are worried – welcome to the crowd of worried people! When will we forget the airliners crashing into the World Trade Center?

Marty – the “bad guys” supported or at least tolerated the people in their midst who planned and carried out the Sept 11th attacks. Both the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan provided a place where those attacks were launched from, they teach in their madrassas that we are wrong and should be attacked. They demonstrate on behalf of people who blew up buses in London, trains in Spain. It does seem a bit unfair that they should live in security since they tolerated those who took ours away!
We are defending ourselves from a series of sneak attacks (at least in Afghanistan and Pakistan) which many of the people in those areas would support today.
You know that you could not go over there and support them since you would have to conceal your Christian faith while there. You would have to hide your Bible, you would have to not openly mention your faith or you might be killed.
Those people from that area who have come to the US or Europe can openly practice their faith. There are mosques that advertise freely.
Can you go there and openly advertise a Christian meeting?
Perhaps we should defend ourselves by only using “humane” weapons such as knives? If we sent lots of people, and lost lots of people, we could humanely defend ourselves? Is that what you want?

Hmm… doesn’t mention the Taliban or drug cartels who buy Heroin from them.I thought they were the demons?Go over there and try talking to the Mullahs.They kill non muslems over there for trying to teach any religion but Islam.

The psychological effects of sustained bombardment are the same whether it’s via drones, artillery, or manned aircraft.

The reason so many people feel ‘terrorized’ in Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan is the Taliban has decided to use civilians as a covering tactic and fled into Pakistan to use it as a safe haven to regroup and replenish forces, weapons, and supplies.

This is not a problem created by drones. It’s created by the sort of men who pour acid on children for attending school and stone women to death for the crime of being rape victims — with religious conviction.

That being said, the drone strikes are militarily very productive in terms of reward versus risk but obviously do nothing to win hearts and minds.

The only way to “win” in Afghanistan is to commit crimes against humanity — to wipe out every living male of fighting age leaving only women and small children alive to rebuild a country from the ruin of oppression and conquest.

The modern world does not have the stomach for this sort of total war but the religious conviction of Taliban men is fueled by just that type of conflict — including the never ending cycle of barbaric violence and oppression against their own people when no foreign enemy is available.

Are they not worried about when the next suicide bomber is going to blow himself up while standing next to them? The Bible says that those that do evil should fear justice, those that do good do not fear justice. The true terrorists started a war against us a long time ago, and they had no real fear of retaliation. Their terror attacks continued and increased in scope and complexity. Now we are taking justice to them, and some suggest we are the terrorists?

President Obama has declared that this is effectively a war, so use of lethal force is legal. In previous similar situations, enemy combatants certainly did include US citizens, such as in battles in WW2. Should we have stopped combat until we could ascertain the citizenship of our opponents, and indicted the ones that were US citizens? No, we can’t do that.

We are in a low intensity war and must pursue it with all possible timeliness, we cannot stop to separate various enemy combatants into various citizen statuses and treat them differently. When they join the opposing forces (note that uniforms are not required to be a legal enemy combatant) they put themselves into the situation where we deal with enemy combatants legally.